Death and Loss
What Storm, What Thunder centers on the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, an earthquake that killed between 250,000-300,000 people. As such, death and loss are major themes in the novel. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake the number of dead is nearly incomprehensible; characters describe seeing bodies piled up in the streets and loved ones taken away in trucks to be dumped in mass graves. Port-Au-Prince is overwhelmed by the dead. Unable to give them proper burials, individuals become mere numbers, a mass of bodies. This reality haunts Sara who laments that she did not give her daughters a proper burial. When Anne returns to Haiti, she feels death like a presence in the air. Chancy also weaves in a uniquely Haitian view of death that is tied to the Vodou religion. In Vodou, there is a strong link between the dead and the living. The ancestors and the dead’s spirits are not truly gone, such as Jonas who watches over his mother after he dies. On top of the loss of life are so many other losses. In a matter of seconds, 1.3 million people lost their homes along with most of their personal belongings. Forced to start over, characters struggle not just with material losses but the loss of security, innocence, and a way of life. These losses pile up to make the true devastation of the earthquake much bigger than the death count. Many of these losses are under the surface and Chancy reveals them through taking a personal look at a national tragedy.
Trauma
Intersecting with death and loss is the theme of trauma. In her novel, Chancy explores how different characters try and cope with the trauma they face as a result of the earthquake. Sara turns into herself. She disconnects from people around her and is completely lost in her grief, until the fire once again places her into a family environment where she can be surrounded by love and community. Both Paul and Taffia are survivors of sexual assault; they both experience the silence and shame that surround sexual assault and further isolates survivors. Whereas Paul tries to toughen up as a form of protection, Taffia is met by a community of women who support her as she is thrust into the role of mother.
Chancy makes it clear that trauma lasts much longer than the immediacy of a news cycle. She provides the perspective of two countries at different stages of dealing with major national trauma: Rwanda ten years after the horrors of the genocide and Haiti fresh after a tragedy. Haiti is like an open wound, everyone's pain raw and fresh. People are scared to go back to their houses for fear they will collapse on them; other survivors seem to be ghosts of their former selves. In Rwanda, Anna sees the long process of a country working through its pain and violent history. Unfortunately, some individuals are unable to cope with the trauma of what they have been through. Olivier is consumed by the loss of his three children, and the specific nightmare of witnessing his son’s amputation. He tries to run away from it but cannot. Instead, Olivier is consumed with shame that he was not emotionally strong enough to accompany his wife and son. All alone, and without community to support him, Olivier spirals and ends up taking his own life. Ma Lou bears witness to the emotional and physical wounds of people in her community. She realizes that what people need most is to be listened to and offers people an anecdote to help ease their suffering.
Poverty and Inequality
Many of the characters in What Storm, What Thunder live in, or come from, situations of poverty. Jonas dreams of the day his family can buy all 12 eggs instead of just one or two, Taffia has nowhere to charge the iPod Didier sends her, and Tatie is the only one in the neighborhood with her own TV. Chancy makes it clear that racism and colonialism are at the roots of poverty in Haiti. Chancy provides a seething rebuke of the poverty in Haiti: the international response after the Haitian revolution, nonexistent zoning rules for housing, and a lack of trust in Haitians to manage foreign aid. This reality is contrasted by a small percentage of wealthy people who live apart from the rest of the population. Only characters who provide direct services to the wealthy – sex workers, drug dealers, and domestic workers – come into contact with them. Sonia feels this divide acutely as a child as she walks through the luxurious house of her mother’s employer. Poverty also shapes the paths and opportunities, or lack thereof, available to the characters in the novel. The earthquake further exacerbates this reality. In the camps, many fight to survive with only limited access to basic necessities like food, water, and medicine. Rather than provide a solution to poverty, a dysfunctional international aid system creates dependency without giving Haitians the resources to truly solve some of the challenges they face as a society.
Striving
Given that many of the characters live in difficult circumstances, striving for a different life is a recurring theme in the novel. Characters hustle, trying to make enough money to escape and pursue their dreams. Some dream of security, others money, respect, love, or freedom. What they dream about varies, but the ambition to “make it” or make it out is common among all of them. While Richard finds success in the business world, many of the others choose between the limited options available to them: sex work, drug trafficking, and working as a fixer. Walking through the luxurious home of her mother’s employer, Sonia remembers it as the “beginning of wanting more than I could have.” Sonia chooses sex work as a means to an end and is judged by society and her family for her choice. From her vantage point at home, Taffia feels that both Sonia and Didier have escaped. Yet she is unable to see the sacrifices and limitations that each of her siblings face as they strive for more.
Family and Gender Roles
In What Storm, What Thunder, Chancy portrays the highly patriarchal society in Haiti and how this impacts families and gender roles. She depicts the unequal burdens that men and women carry in the family. Many of the fathers in the book are absent from their children’s lives in some significant way. Richard abandons his family in Haiti in pursuit of a different life; in his absence, Ma Lou steps in to help care for Anne. Both Richard and Leopold support their children financially but neglect to develop a relationship with them. Meanwhile, Taffia and Paul’s father is physically present but is lost to alcoholism. In the absence of support from the men in their lives, women must pick up the slack, often shouldering the bulk of caregiving and providing financially as well. Some of this work is acknowledged, such as Didier’s song or Olivier’s love and appreciation of Sara, while others, like Richard, completely negates the impact Ma Lou had on his life. After his transformation, Leopold makes amends with his mother after he realizes how hard she tried to protect and guide him growing up. By showing women’s toil, Chancy illustrates how these unbalanced dynamics come at a cost for both men and women in society.
Community
In What Story, What Thunder, community is one of the anecdotes to the destruction and despair of the earthquake. In the wake of the earthquake, people understand that no one is coming to help them. In fact, governmental intervention is glaringly absent throughout the novel. So for the first few days, everyone bands together to dig people out, provide food, and form the first camps. In the weeks and months that follow, international aid groups arrive but their efforts are often misguided and ineffective. As such, Haitians must rely on each other to survive. Ma Lou, Loko, and others look out for Sara at her lowest point. They help take care of Jonas, bathe Sara, and save her life when her tent catches fire. Without a community around her, Sara might have suffered the same fate as her husband Olivier. In an effort to escape his grief, Olivier leaves Sara and others. But isolated, and with no one to accompany him in his grief, it swallows him whole. Didier is another character isolated from his community. He struggles in the highly individualist American culture calling it, “careless to the point of cruelty.” While there are plenty of examples of Haitians acting in self interest in the novel, Chancy makes a strong argument for community being at the root of Haitian’s resilience in the face of hardship.
Hope and Resilience
Despite the trying circumstances they find themselves in, many characters find a way to hold onto threads of hope that lend them resilience. In choosing the women she sleeps with, Sonia carves out a space for herself where love and intimacy can still exist. This is important to her given that she works in a job where sex and desire are transactional. Didier holds on to the hope that he can help protect Taffia's innocence and Sara that Olivier will come back. Whether or not characters can actually achieve what they hope for, their hope gives them strength to continue on. Anne’s design for the cathedral is an effort to rebuild what the earthquake destroyed. She recognizes the importance of preserving the memory of those lost and honoring them as the country slowly begins to move forward. When Ma Lou plans the trip to the waterfall with Anne and the other women, it is an act of hope. She knows that to heal they need to let go of some of the sorrow and pain they have been carrying around. The women support one another, connecting with each other and their spirituality, in an act of collective healing.
